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About Me

I live and blog in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan BA and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. The Institute of Land Warfare, Army magazine, Infantry Magazine, Military Review, Naval Institute Proceedings, and Joint Force Quarterly have published my occasional articles. See "Published Works" on the web version for citations.

The Undead Archives

My undead archives pre-Blogger were actually restored to life after Geocities sites went dark. Start at the old home page here.
If you find a link to the old site on the current site or old site, you should be able to replace the "g" in "geocities" with an "r" and make a good link.
Another archived site is here.
It replaces the ".com" with ".ws".
I hope to move all the older archives here (and started that project) but it is really tedious.

Friday, January 15, 2016

This Was Really My Point

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in the winter of 2014, I've called for us to arm Ukraine to resist the Russians--but did not think we needed to supply big-ticket items since Ukraine had plenty of that to restore to service. Ukraine has done just that:

Ukraine did this by reviving a lot of its Cold War era military industries. For example Ukraine is refurbishing a lot of existing equipment. This includes the Cold War era armored vehicles Ukraine has lots of. Most of these were little used in the past but can still be effective fighting Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine. Even before the Russian aggression began in 2014 Ukraine had begun refurbing decades’ old T-64 tanks. In 2007 Ukraine began rebuilding hundreds of T-64s in storage. This cost about $600,000 per tank and the refurbished vehicles were able to deal with the more modern Russian tanks in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine also revived plans to build IFVs (heavy infantry fighting vehicles) based on the chassis of retired T-64s. This resulted in an IFV that had the T-64 turret removed and the chassis built up to create a 35 ton vehicle. All manner of Cold War era armored vehicles are being refurbished and put back into service.

So I don't blame the Obama administration and the West generally for not sending heavy stuff to Ukraine. Ukraine already has it and it is easier to put familiar weapons into service.

I'd like Western help to fill capabilities gaps and to make what Ukraine has more effective with the goal of building up Ukraine's ability to pose a threat to Russian control of the Donbas and Crimea.

(I'd really like Ukraine to build the capability of firing long-range missiles at Crimean bases, rockets to hit Russians manning the front lines at the neck of the peninsula, and mining Crimean harbors.)

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Thursday he wanted EU and US help in securing Crimea's return from Russia and vowed to win back the separatist east this year.

Which might be a problem since much of the West would rather Ukraine just accept the losses.

In the short run, Ukraine can just increase the costs of Russia's occupation and not make it easier for Russia's conquered regions to thrive.

And Ukraine needs to increase their military and irregular capabilities to undermine pro-Russian elements in the east and have a military option to attack and inflict casualties on the Russians in the process.

As for Crimea, I doubt Ukraine could drive the Russians out at this point. But as I noted, Ukraine could create military capabilities to undermine the usefulness of Russia's Crimea bases and inflict losses on the Russians for holding it.

But if Russia's new citizens don't enjoy the benefits of what they thought Russian control would bring and if Ukraine can carry out their own low-level war against Russian control, perhaps the locals will get buyer's regret and move away from being pro-Russian.

This will be easier to do if Ukraine gets their corruption under control and joins the west to finally get their economy thriving and democracy entrenched as a contrast to authoritarian Russia.

UPDATE: So eager is much of the West for peace at any price (that Ukraine has to pay) that a notion like this isn't laughed off the pages:

It looks like the Kremlin is getting serious about resolving the ongoing Ukraine crisis.

President Vladimir Putin appears to have put his best advisers on the case, bolstering hopes that 2016 will be the year the stalled Minsk II agreements, negotiated by France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine to bring peace to war-ravaged eastern Ukraine, gain real traction.

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Note on site statistics: When I strip out the junk hits from Blogger statistics that seem to come and go in waves, I appear to have about 10,000 hits per month.

My old statistics package, Site Meter, seems to miss a lot and even disappears visits after they've appeared.

I just added a new StatCounter. So far it shows far fewer hits than Blogger and is more in line with Site Meter. But I suspect neither of the non-Blogger statistics register hits from social media. So I'm not sure what my audience size is. It is puzzling to me.

Of course, it is quite possible that my failure to use Facebook and Twitter has handicapped me in getting an audience. Or it may be an additional issue. I may be a blogosaur!